Pro Tip: Selling Shards (TL:DR, Huge Stacks = Bad)

[Kerii]

I could take a day or two to sell 100 shards at 250gil. Or~ I can sell 1,000 shards in an hour for 50gil each. In a literal sense I make more money by the latter method. Why? Because people who are looking to buy in bulk will seek out the cheapest option. A greedier player may simply buy me out while stocking up to make a larger profit with a slower sale, or a one off crafter who just wants a few shards will buy mine because they are a reasonable number of items for a reasonable price. I am going to always pump out more money than price gougers because those same people are in my potential customer demographic.

[Greydor]

I've read a lot of feedback about how some users like to buy in bulk, and the last response was regarding selling in bulk.

For those of you who farm/sell shards, why did you choose to do that for gil instead of other methods (e.g. crafting, gathering tangible mats, etc.). The return is just so poor, so I'd honestly like to know.

[Ulfhade]

I'll only buy shards in small quantities if they're greatly underpriced. Otherwise, its just not worth it for me. I can easily blow though 2k in shards in an afternoon if I'm doing some serious crafting, and its not worth the time/tax market to get small bundles.

[MomomiMomi]

I look at those pitiful stacks of 100 crystals and think to myself, "Yeah, that'll last an afternoon. Maybe."

More like a minute.

[YGSLlew]

I think it really depends on how people play. I for myself don't craft at all and I let my retainers farm windshards solely for selling on the MB. Here on Cerberus, stacks of 500 to 1000 pieces per stack sell really well.

[Niwashi]

For those of you who farm/sell shards, why did you choose to do that for gil instead of other methods (e.g. crafting, gathering tangible mats, etc.). The return is just so poor, so I'd honestly like to know.

Well, I haven't for a long time, but when I did, it was because I was looking for something I could keep selling consistently for quite a while. With most crafted or gathered items, if you want to sell a lot, you'll have to diversify between lots of different items, because for any one of them you can too easily flood the market so that none of your stuff sells any more. The demand for shards is so consistently high that that isn't an issue. (This is also why bots favor shards, of course.)

At the time, I also couldn't yet make as much from crafting as I can now that I've leveled my DoH to 50. Being able to consistently HQ intermediate crafted materials makes those a good gil source, and an easier one than shard farming. But I was still fairly low level (though I don't remember quite what level) back when I was making money gathering and selling shards, so my options were a bit more limited.